Where does 19th century France intersect with Mormonism? So glad you asked, you’re about to find out! Richie is joined by Daryl, Heather, and Corry to talk about their new book, Marianne Meets the Mormons. You’ll find out who Marianne is, and how the French examined things like polygamy, family, & socialism in the Mormon community as a way to help them better understand their own changing culture.
In the nineteenth century, a fascination with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made Mormons and Mormonism a common trope in French journalism, art, literature, politics, and popular culture. Heather Belnap, Corry Cropper, and Daryl Lee bring to light French representations of Mormonism from the 1830s to 1914, arguing that these portrayals often critiqued and parodied French society. Mormonism became a pretext for reconsidering issues such as gender, colonialism, the family, and church-state relations while providing artists and authors with a means for working through the possibilities of their own evolving national identity.
Surprising and innovative, Marianne Meets the Mormons looks at how nineteenth-century French observers engaged with the idea of Mormonism in order to reframe their own cultural preoccupations.
Heather Belnap is Associate Professor of Art History & Curatorial Studies and directs the European Studies program at Brigham Young University, where she currently holds a College of Humanities Professorship. She was recently awarded BYU’s 2022 Phi Kappa Phi Award.
She has presented and published widely in feminist art history, and particularly on women in nineteenth-century French art and society. Recently, she has turned her attention to the fields of Utah and Mormon studies. Professor Belnap has co-edited two books, Interior Portraiture and Masculine Identity in France, 1789-1914 (Ashgate, 2011) and Women, Femininity, and Public Space in European Visual Culture, 1789-1914 (Routledge, 2014), and co-authored, with Corry Cropper and Daryl Lee, Marianne Meets the Mormons: Representations of Mormonism in Nineteenth-century France (University of Illinois Press, 2022). She is currently working on three book projects: Modernity’s Muses: Women, Art, and Culture in Post-Revolutionary Paris; a volume on Mormon artist Minerva Teichert for the Introductions to Mormon Thought series; and Artistic Frontiers: Women and the Making of the Utah Art Scene, 1880-1940 (with Emily Larsen).
Professor Belnap teaches courses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art, modern and contemporary art, women in art, and European Studies.
Corry Cropper specializes in nineteenth-century French literature (particularly the works of Prosper Mérimée) and sports in French literature and culture. He enjoys teaching all levels of French: introductory literature courses, graduate seminars, business French, courses on French culture and history, and language classes. He served as co-chair of the Nineteenth-Century French Studies Association with Andrea Goulet and Larry Schehr from 2010-17. He was chair of the department of French and Italian at BYU from 2009-2018 and currently works as an associate dean in the College of Humanities.
Daryl Lee is Professor of French at Brigham Young University and an affiliate of BYU’s Global Women’s Studies, International Cinema Studies, and Comparative Literature programs. His work in cultural studies has addressed two broad eras (late nineteenth-century France and post-war cinema), spans popular and high culture, and has incorporated a variety of forms and material objects, from lyric poetry, the naturalist novel, and crime films to photographic albums of war ruins in Paris, guidebooks, and caricature. His commitment to experiential learning through internships and study abroad has included taking students to France, Morocco and Senegal.
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